New England Blitz

Mt Graylock, MA

In keeping with the upcoming Super Bowl, Marty, Stic and I did a blitz tour of New England layouts last weekend and took in the train show at the Big E. And we didn't even get tackled. I can report that New England is in a fever pitch and is ready for the big game, but for this weekend, we could care less as we saw and operated on some great layouts.

The weekend began with a fumble as American Airlines only realized they were short a pilot to fly our plane after they dragged all the passengers out to the aircraft on a shuttle. Marty volunteered to quarterback the flight, but since he's only ever piloted a Navy LST, the airline took a time out instead. The airline eventually got us to Hartford after one hour of booth review and we began the epic weekend.

Marty and Jim (l to r)

First down was Jim DuFour's Cheshire Branch layout in the far suburbs of Boston. It depicts a Boston and Maine branch line in the 1950s. It is a jewel of a layout, with heavy prototype basis. We got to run some engines and they performed flawlessly. Jim has some of the best sounding engines too. He and his technician helpers have been able to program the sound systems for very realistic sound effects. We met a bunch of neat folks at Jim's including George Corey, a 92 year old railfan that has amazingly vivid memories of the B&M steam operations, friends from Canada (who were captivated by the fact that Stic was once a professional hockey player) and the staff of MRH.

Marty, Chris and Stic (l to r) . Chris is showing us his New Haven
Library and artifact collection on the second floor of his home.
The layout fills the basement

After a few delightful hours with Jim,  we threw a deep bomb on second down and headed south to the Connecticut shores of the Long Island Sound to operate on Chris Adams's Valley Line. He models a New Haven branch line that happens to run about 50 yards behind his house, though now as a tourist line. The prototype railroad was not running, but we made up for it by running nearly a full set of downs on the layout. Chris's layout is strictly prototype based. It is still being sceniced in some areas, but the operations were great. Lot of switching and interplay between trains. I got a choice job - the Valley Local. I was lucky to have Pete as my conductor while I handled the throttle. Pete was very capable and we had a great time. The little 2-8-0 we ran was flawless. We also had a great time meeting his regular crew, several of whom said they are readers of the blog. Thanks guys. Leave a comment every and now and then to say, "hi".

We were exhausted when we arrived at the hotel in Springfield  just before midnight. We punted and went to bed.

Tom Piccirillo (O scale modeler) and Hal Miller at MR Booth. (l to r)

The next day was the train show at the Big E. It was a huge show spread across 5 buildings. My objectives were to buy needed supplies for the Aquia Line and other projects. I was very successful, even though I did not get to see everything at the show. It was fun to see some old friends, like Tom Piccirillo, and meet a lot of new people, including Hal Miller, editor of Model Railroader magazine. That night we had diner in a restored dinning car at the Steaming Tender Restaurant in Palmer, Massachusetts.

Jason's lift our section using linear actuators. There are actually
three actuators, one is not visible in this photo.

On Sunday we visited Jason Fountain and Neil Schofield's layouts in Charlton, Massachusetts. Both were outstanding layouts. Jason models the Southern New England, one of my personal favorite railroads even though it never existed. His layout includes dozens of craftsman structures arrayed in a very realistic manner. It creates a very believable impression of a New England town and countryside  in the steam to diesel transition era. He has a lift-out section that uses three linear actuators that is very impressive and clever.

Jason, Marty, and Stic (l to r)

Fantastic Mill on Jason's layout

Photo line of model railfan at Neil's layout. That's Don James in the
foreground with the tripod. In addition to being a retired locomotive engineer,
a fantastic modeler, and an Alkem Scale Models customer, Don is
 one of Stic's biggest fans.

Neil's layout is set in the 1980s on CP trunk line in northern Vermont from Wells River to Sherbrooke. After two years of work his layout is about 1/3rd complete, but what he has finished is utterly outstanding. It is hyper-realistic scenery essentially on a narrow shelf. He showed us his layout plans and it looks like it will be an amazing design. I look forward to going back and operating it as it gets further along.

Shot showing some of Neil's realistic scenery

On Monday we headed northwest from Springfield through some gorgeous Berkshire scenery (see first photo above) to visit Dick Elwell's Hoosac Valley layout. Dick has essentially completed the layout and it is gorgeous.  He has hundreds of contest quality craftsman structures on the layout. They are skillfully arranged in a realistic manner and have no whiff of caricature that frequently accompanies these structures. When you stand in the basement you feel like you are in rural New England on a brisk fall day.  Thelayout also features  operational signals, CTC, sound, and it runs great. Seeing this layout was a real treat. I have to rank it as one of the top layouts I have ever visited.

Stic, Dick and Marty (l to r)

We returned home safe and sound. All in all a great weekend. Thanks to all our hosts for their hospitality and friendship. We model railroaders are so fortunate to have friends around the world that so generously share their time and hobby with us.

BTW this was post 800 to this blog. There have been over 1.2 million visits.

Springfield Bound

Marty McGuirk, Stic Harris and I are heading up to Amherst Model railroad Society Annual Train Show in Springfield, Mass this weekend.  Perhaps we'll see you there, though the odds are low as it is such a huge event. I will be stocking up on supplies for a new project. But we'll talk more about that later. We also plan to see and operate some layouts.


Meanwhile John Steitz stopped by tonight to pick up some detail parts for his N Scale steel mill modules. John is a member of NVNTRAK. I used to be very active in that modular group, but had to cut back as other projects took up too much time.






Some goodies arrived today. First, the wharf kit arrived. By wharf kit I really mean a really big box of strip and sheet basswood  and lite plywood. I will start building the wharf after the Springfield Show.

Also, I received new BPS circuits from Neil Stanton. These circuits will allow the Stanton decoders to run from rail power while also charging the batteries. So the batteries essentially become keep alive circuits. I will retro fit Whiton and Fury with these soon.

On a down side, the TCS WOW decoder in my PHL engine 66 is acting up. I have to remove it and send it in for repairs.

Tight gauge, kinks, and other assorted maladies

I have spent a few hours the past nights adding more spikes and  test running a typical train. I found a few tight gauge spots and a kink at the easement to the first turnout to Aquia Landing yard. I resolved these.

Most cars are working well, but I did notice a pair of cars that were consistently misbehaving. As they encountered certain curves, their links would jam in the couplers and lift the wheels off the track. They would run fine on their own or if they were not coupled. The problem was in mismatched coupler heights between the two cars. I have also encountered some other problems when pushing, such as bumpers interfering on tight curves, but those was not the problem tonight.

To resolve this issue I need to do a complete coupler height check on all my rolling stock. Over the years I have tried several different truck designs and freight car builds. I was not very careful in ensuring that they had matching couple height. But with my tight curves and link and pin couplers, I need to tune all the cars and engine to the same couple height.

For a break from the drudgery of spiking and tuning cars, I took a photo of an Osceola on the engine house lead track before I put the rails in. The track is long enough to hold two engines.  I think it looks good. It will be fun to finish this scene.

Almost Halfway there!

I installed three more turnouts today. That makes 5 so far - almost halfway there!  I also used up the first bag of 1,000 spikes.

This switch stand had to be mounted away from the points
due to lack of clearance between the tracks,

These are key turnouts as they feed the yard tracks to the wharf and wye.   So far they run smooth. I need to cut gaps before running trains through.

I decided to add an additional stub track off the nearest yard track. That will serve the bakery. This track is nearly long enough to hold a 7 car train, so it can also be used as slough track when switching the yard if the bakery spots are empty. That's why finishing 5 turnouts is not quite halfway. I now have 11 in Aquia Landing.

Piney Branch Mill Revisited

The water wheel and race are long gone. The building received new siding in 1963

I took my mom for a drive today to Manassas to work on Marty McGuirk's backdrop. He said he would be blogging about that on his Central Vermont RR blog. 

On the way out there we took a "short cut" along Pope's Head Road in Fairfax County. That took us past the mill at Piney Branch. This mill served as the prototype inspiration for the mill on my layout.

Here are some photos I took of the prototype mill and my finished model of it.

Meanwhile work continues on track laying at Aquia Landing. I glued down a bunch of ties for the complex east end of the yard. There are five turnouts that are adjacent to each other here.